The present invention is an improvement of the basic collector of Rhoades et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,989,507, now owned by Cash Can, Inc., the assignee of the present invention, and incorporated herein by reference.
This invention provides a can collector for gathering and temporarily storing empty recyclable beverage cans that a consumer or householder may accumulate in relatively small numbers. The can collector machine can be conveniently located, for example in a grocery store parking lot, and the cans can be conveniently and easily deposited into the machine which compacts or crushes the cans and temporarily stores them within the enclosure from which they are eventually transported to a recycling station. The invention provides means for counting the deposited cans, means for determining if they are aluminum or non-aluminum, and may have means to compensate the depositor with cash or credit slips in payment for the deposited cans. In the latter case, the can collector becomes a reverse vending machine.
Rhoades et al. teach the basic structure of such a collector. The present invention, however, is directed to an enhanced system for the separation of aluminum cans from the other material deposited in the collector, a more robust crushing device, and a data collection, handling, and reporting feature that is neither shown nor suggested in known recycling collector systems.
In the past, known recycling machines have made certain efforts to separate ferrous from aluminum cans so that both could be recycled. Such machines also attempted to remove other unwanted debris, such as paper, glass, and other refuse from the cans to be recycled. Unfortunately, such efforts were less than effective and recyclable cans often became entrained in the refuse and trash was often carried along with cans to the crusher. This practice was wasteful and created frequent maintenance problems. Thus, there remains a need for an aluminum recycling machine that improves the separation process so that more aluminum cans are crushed for recycling and less debris is carried along with the aluminum.
Known systems have also suffered other maintenance problems. A frequent cause of recycling machine downtime was jamming of the crusher mechanism. While the removal of debris from the aluminum can stream significantly improves crusher reliability, there still remains a need for a more robust crusher mechanism. Such a crusher mechanism should provide for positive action in grasping, crushing, and ejecting cans from the crusher mechanism and remain free from malfunction in a mixed medium environment.
Finally, recycling mechanisms have heretofore functioned as isolated, stand-alone units with no communication contact with any other system. This has made accounting and accountability difficult and prohibitively expensive at best. Further, the only way to determine a breakdown or other problem with the recycling mechanism was on-site inspection. Little has been done, prior to the present invention, to adapt available microprocessor technology to the problem of monitoring and reporting in a recycling system.